You can’t patent simple math, judge tells patent troll Uniloc

A patent troll that accused Rackspace of violating a patent merely by selling Linux-based servers has seen its case thrown out. A judge ruled the patent claim invalid because it describes a relatively simple math operation.

The company in question is Uniloc, which has a long history of suing tech vendors. In 2009, a US District Court judge overturned a $388 million verdict Uniloc had won against Microsoft. That litigation was finally settled late last year for an undisclosed sum. Uniloc continues litigating, however, with at least a dozen lawsuits filed just last week.

Uniloc sued Rackspace in June 2012 in US District Court in Eastern Texas (PDF), claiming Rackspace violated its patent "by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing servers running Linux Kernel (version 2.6 or higher), which is used to process floating point operations carried out on Rackspace’s servers including those servers used in conjunction with Rackspace’s hosting solutions/products."

Math operations aren't automatically unpatentable, but US District Court Judge Leonard Davis ruled yesterday (PDF) that this one isn't novel enough to deserve patent protection. Why not? Because the "invention" claimed was just a decision to round numbers before, instead of after, an arithmetic computation. Seriously.

Uniloc's patent, filed in 1995 and granted in 1999, covers a "Method and apparatus for handling overflow and underflow in processing floating-point numbers." Uniloc acquired this patent in January 2012 from inventor James Brakefield, who works as an expert witness. This is not the primary patent Uniloc uses to sue vendors, so the rest of its lawsuits will not be impeded by Davis's decision.

The patent asserted against Rackspace has 28 claims, with 20 of them being connected to claim #1, the only one Uniloc asserted. The judge's ruling knocks out most of the patent by striking down the first claim, which reads:

A method for processing floating-point numbers, each floating-point number having at least a sign portion, an exponent portion and a mantissa portion, comprising the steps of: converting a floating-point number memory register representation to a floating-point register representation; rounding the converted floating-point number; performing an arithmetic computation upon said rounded number resulting in a new floating-point value; and converting the resulting new floating-point register value to a floating-point memory register representation.

Uniloc was seeking a jury trial, but Davis granted Rackspace's motion to dismiss the complaint entirely "for failure to allege infringement of a patentable claim."

Rackspace is a customer of Red Hat, maker of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Rackspace has said it would "love to get rid of software patents," and Red Hat routinely defends itself and its customers against patent attacks. In this case, Red Hat said it "provided Rackspace’s defense as part of Red Hat’s commitment to standing behind customers through Red Hat’s Open Source Assurance program."

Rackspace argued that the claim is unpatentable and Davis agreed. For one thing, the claim fails the "machine-or-transformation" test because it does not involve a machine, and the "the transformation portion of the test is not satisfied by the conversion of a number from one format to another," the judge wrote.

Rackspace also argued that the patent claim violates a Supreme Court "prohibition against patenting mathematical formulas and abstract ideas."

In describing just how simple the patent claim is, Davis summarized it as follows: “Claim 1 is, in essence, a formula to 'solve mathematical problems of converting one form of numerical representation to another.' Claim 1 recites a four-step method for processing floating-point numbers: (1) convert the floating-point number from a 'memory register representation' to a 'register representation'; (2) round the result; (3) 'perform an arithmetic computation' on the rounded result to obtain a new floating-point number; and (4) convert the result back to a 'memory register representation.'"

The "novelty" of the claim "is the rounding of the floating-point number before, rather than after, the arithmetic computation."

"Claim 1, then, is merely an improvement on a mathematical formula," Davis wrote. "Even when tied to computing, since floating-point numbers are a computerized numeric format, the conversion of floating-point numbers has applications across fields as diverse as science, math, communications, security, graphics, and games. Thus, a patent on Claim 1 would cover vast end uses, impeding the onward march of science. Under Flook, the improvement over the standard is insufficient to validate Claim 1’s otherwise unpatentable subject matter."

"Flook" refers to Parker v. Flook, a 1978 case in which "the Supreme Court found unpatentable claims directed to an improved method for calculating, using a generalized formulation for converting numbers," Davis wrote.

Not Uniloc's only patent—far from it

Unfortunately for the many companies sued by Uniloc, the patent in the Rackspace case is just a small piece of its portfolio containing more than 50 patents. Red Hat told Ars that it is not aware of any other lawsuits based on this patent.

Uniloc's most important patent is #5,490,216, covering a system for software registration designed to prevent software piracy. The '216 patent has been used in dozens of lawsuits.

The company's website promises continued battles based on this patent. "In 2003 Uniloc filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft for the unauthorized use of a product activation anti-piracy system on Microsoft’s Windows XP and Office XP products," the company states. "In 2009 a Federal Court jury in Rhode Island found Microsoft guilty of willful infringement and ordered Microsoft to pay Uniloc $388 Million in damages. ... Later that year the judge in the case overturned the jury’s verdict. Uniloc has appealed this decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Nevertheless, the Court maintained that Uniloc’s patent is valid, so Uniloc will continue to protect its patent and defend its intellectual property." Microsoft and Uniloc settled in March of last year.

Uniloc isn't kidding about pursuing new lawsuits. It filed 12 new suits on March 21 in the Eastern District of Texas against Activision Blizzard, Aspyr Media, Digital River, Electronic Arts, McAfee, Pervasive Software, Sony, Symantec, Gear Software, Sage Software, SolarWinds, and Wildpackets. Those suits are based on the '216 patent asserted against Microsoft.

Uniloc Luxembourg filed 16 suits in the Eastern District in December 2012 and about a dozen in October 2012. Several of those cases have been withdrawn by Uniloc, probably due to settlements.

While Uniloc's litigation days aren't over, Red Hat and Rackspace declared yesterday's ruling to be an important victory against companies that file patent lawsuits despite not making any technology of their own.

“NPE [non-practicing entity] patent lawsuits are a chronic and serious problem for the technology industry," Red Hat Assistant General Counsel Rob Tiller said in an announcement. "Such lawsuits, which are frequently based on patents that should never have been granted, typically cost millions of dollars to defend. ... Courts can help address this problem by determining the validity of patents early and with appropriate care. In this case, Judge Davis did just that, and set a great example for future cases.”

“The early dismissal of this case delivers a clear message that patent assertion entities can’t expect quick settlements on weak claims, a tactic many patent assertion entities use to monetize questionable patents,” Rackspace General Counsel Alan Schoenbaum said. “We salute Red Hat for its outstanding defense and for standing firm with its customers in defeating this patent troll. We hope that many more of these spurious software patent lawsuits will be dismissed on similar grounds."

We've asked Uniloc if it will appeal the case, but we haven't heard back yet.

Promoted Comments

I find this case particularly disappointing because there was a time when Uniloc was a 'real' company with genuine products they actively sold. This case suggests that they've long given up on that and descended into being a patent troll.

Their most important patent #5490216, mentioned in the article, was the basis for product activation software that they developed and actively sold (through IBM) in the 1990s. As far as I know it was a genuinely new product; there wasn't anything else like it available at the time. I'm not a fan of software patents, but if there is ever a software patent worth defending then it's one like this: an apparently innovative commercial product that was sold worldwide.

But that seems to be in the past now. I previously respected them for their work in the 1990s, but my respect has now been destroyed by reading about this case. The patent in this case, #5892697, seems too obvious to me to deserve any protection. A company that asserts such a ludicrous claim does not deserve my respect.

83 Reader Comments

IANAL, but if I remember correctly there is a difference between trademarks and design patents. IDK what that difference is, but I seem to remember that there is one.

afaik (IANAL either, but I've been involved a bit with this stuff):

A design patent concerns the appearance of useful things. For example, a telephone that looks different from another phone (but which has the same insides) could be covered by a design patent. Much of the recent Samsung vs. Apple case covered design patents (rounded rectangles, etc.). But you can't use a design patent to protect the design of the "workings" of an object. That's a utility patent.

A piece of sculpture that has no use other than being an art object can't be covered by a design patent, but it could be copyrighted. Copyrights involve the expression of creative ideas.

A trademark is a word, sequence of words, or graphic design that is used to identify a person or company in matters of trade. For example "General Electric" is a trademark, as is the GE logo. But since the GE logo is not a "useful thing", aside from its use as a trademark, it can't be covered by design patent. GE could, however, make a clock with a case in the shape of a 3D extrusion of their logo, and that clock's outward appearance could then be covered by design patent. (But not the inner workings.)

One "matter of trade" is in identification of products, not just companies. So, for example, the visual design of the character "Mickey Mouse" is copyrighted, but the phrase "Mickey Mouse" is trademarked, as the Disney corp does business under that and many related names. So you can't call your custom designed candy dispenser a "Mickey Mouse candy dispenser", even if it doesn't look a thing like Mickey Mouse. This doesn't mean you can't go around saying "Mickey Mouse". Just that you can't use that phrase to identify some business you're trying to conduct.

IANAL, but if I remember correctly there is a difference between trademarks and design patents. IDK what that difference is, but I seem to remember that there is one.

afaik (IANAL either, but I've been involved a bit with this stuff):

A design patent concerns the appearance of useful things. For example, a telephone that looks different from another phone (but which has the same insides) could be covered by a design patent. Much of the recent Samsung vs. Apple case covered design patents (rounded rectangles, etc.). But you can't use a design patent to protect the design of the "workings" of an object. That's a utility patent.

A piece of sculpture that has no use other than being an art object can't be covered by a design patent, but it could be copyrighted. Copyrights involve the expression of creative ideas.

A trademark is a word, sequence of words, or graphic design that is used to identify a person or company in matters of trade. For example "General Electric" is a trademark, as is the GE logo. But since the GE logo is not a "useful thing", aside from its use as a trademark, it can't be covered by design patent. GE could, however, make a clock with a case in the shape of a 3D extrusion of their logo, and that clock's outward appearance could then be covered by design patent. (But not the inner workings.)

One "matter of trade" is in identification of products, not just companies. So, for example, the visual design of the character "Mickey Mouse" is copyrighted, but the phrase "Mickey Mouse" is trademarked, as the Disney corp does business under that and many related names. So you can't call your custom designed candy dispenser a "Mickey Mouse candy dispenser", even if it doesn't look a thing like Mickey Mouse. This doesn't mean you can't go around saying "Mickey Mouse". Just that you can't use that phrase to identify some business you're trying to conduct.

Rounding before the computation goes counter to every "best practice" I've ever heard of. Can somebody with a deeper understanding please explain how this constitutes an "improvement"? Or is it, as I suspect, a load of cr@p?

Actually, if you think of the numbers as counts of physical items that cannot be delivered as fractions, then pre-rounding makes a lot of sense. I have used this technique many times in resource planning because it is kind of hard to hire a half of a person...

And in the process, hurting businesses that are innovating by using a system that CLAIMS TO PROTECT INNOVATION.

If I were king, these kind of people would be summarily executed. They live in a society that wishes to protect their rights, and in return, they simply abuse the system with no thought for the well being of others or society at large.

"Method and apparatus for handling overflow and underflow in processing floating-point numbers."

A patent on rounding damn numbers? Seriously?

And some people wonder why others bash the patent system.

Actually in digital signal processing, there is a procedure regarding rounding. (I think it was patented.) The idea is you reduce the number of 1's in a multiplier term, that is 10100011 would be reduced to 10100000. If you have pipelined hardware rather than a general purpose multiplier/ALU, you could eliminate 6 shifts and two additions in the example given. In a large FIR filter, you could eliminate a lot of hardware this way. Sometime you add more taps but use simpler multipliers.

I'm glad that they're suing people for anti-piracy methods though. DRM pisses me off, and I think the world would be better off without it. So make it more expensive to implement anti-piracy than to not have it, and we have a winning formula!

Imagine what would happen if patent clerks got a penalty every time a patent they approved was struck down in court.

They may quit their job and discover some paradigm-altering scientific principle...

Doubtful. Good scientists, engineers and researchers have very well tuned bullshit sniffers. If you're a patent clerk who considers everything novel by default, handing out patents like penny candies, you probably wouldn't recognize an important discovery if it you hit you over the head with a sledgehammer. I'm tired of this "patent clerks don't have enough time to do proper reviews" excuse that gets trotted out every time a laughably bogus patent is identified. That's where the bullshit sniffer is supposed to come in.

I was also going to say fuck Microsoft for settling with patent terrorists on the DRM stuff, but you probably can't blame them after some clueless judge + jury combo originally saw fit to ding them for $400 million.

I thought that I've seen the dumbest patents issued already, but this one takes the cake by a long shot. Heck, when I'm doing calculations on my chemistry exams, I tend to round a little bit before I compute the answer since at some point extra decimal places don't really make a difference when calculating pH and equilibrium, so the idea isn't new and isn't limited to computers since I can do it with my brain.

Well, even as I was reading the article, I was thinking about the concept of Significant Digits and how you're REQUIRED to do that sort of rounding mid equation in order to maintain data integrity.

To make a simple example, if you're calculating the area of a circle, it's pi*r^2. If you're measuring the radius with a ruler that's only graduated by millimeters, your final result is only going to be accurate to 0.001m, no matter whether you use 3.14 in your calculation or 3.14159265358979323846. Neither is going to be more 'accurate' without a finer measurement of the radius, and extra digits are just a waste of time and registers, so it's best to just round it based on the least accurate factor in the equation.

That's what I thought the patent was describing, essentially (though I freely admit to being inaccurate or wrong in that estimation), which is a method taught is EVERY Chem 101 course. How can that be patentable just because you're doing it with a computer?

Wait, what? I prepare financial statements rounded to the nearest thousand dollars (and in some cases to the million). So if I round the numbers prior to putting them in the tables I am violating someone's patent?

Wait, what? I prepare financial statements rounded to the nearest thousand dollars (and in some cases to the million). So if I round the numbers prior to putting them in the tables I am violating someone's patent?

That's just another sign of how broken patents are.

Well the twisty logik is a sure sign of just how ideological you are about it.

I find this case particularly disappointing because there was a time when Uniloc was a 'real' company with genuine products they actively sold. This case suggests that they've long given up on that and descended into being a patent troll.

Their most important patent #5490216, mentioned in the article, was the basis for product activation software that they developed and actively sold (through IBM) in the 1990s. As far as I know it was a genuinely new product; there wasn't anything else like it available at the time. I'm not a fan of software patents, but if there is ever a software patent worth defending then it's one like this: an apparently innovative commercial product that was sold worldwide.

But that seems to be in the past now. I previously respected them for their work in the 1990s, but my respect has now been destroyed by reading about this case. The patent in this case, #5892697, seems too obvious to me to deserve any protection. A company that asserts such a ludicrous claim does not deserve my respect.

I haven't heard back from the USPTO yet on my patent for this thing I invented I like to call "the number zero"...

You will be hearing from my lawyers, I clearly remember turning in my application the day before you, so you are an infringer...

I know you're probably joking, but afaik patent applications must be sent registered mail, so this kind of issue would be trivial to prove.

More on topic, why in hell would you do rounding before the calculation? Rounding after the calculation reduces accumulated errors. Also, you shouldn't be rounding anything (except when you have underflow/overflow) until you display the result to the user. If you encounter overflow/underflow, an exception should be thrown.

5/3*8Internally the 5/3 result is truncated to the size of the register. If it rounded instead of truncated then it would infringe the patent. Note the 5/3 result must be modified before the *8 is performed since the exact result will not fit a machine register. Rounding actually reduces the error in these cases and is routine in paper and pencil calculation. But you must first license this method of reducing computational error if you do it in software.

........._5/3=1.6Personally I prefer 1.6667*8 for calculations. However in order to avoid infringing I must use 1.6666*8 instead.

Not too long ago we got to read about a lawsuit surrounding a patent to round corners.

Can we please move past conflating utility and design patents?

Only when we stop calling them patents, and start calling them trademarks, which is what they are.

IANAL, but if I remember correctly there is a difference between trademarks and design patents. IDK what that difference is, but I seem to remember that there is one.

However if your point was there was no need for them since Trademark already covered the design aspect that someone would patent, then I would tend to agree.

Patents remain in force for a fixed term then automatically expire. They do not need to be used.Trademarks remain in force until they are no longer either used or enforced. The term is effectively unlimited, but the expiration can be almost immediate if not used.

Not too long ago we got to read about a lawsuit surrounding a patent to round corners.

Can we please move past conflating utility and design patents?

Only when we stop calling them patents, and start calling them trademarks, which is what they are.

IANAL, but if I remember correctly there is a difference between trademarks and design patents. IDK what that difference is, but I seem to remember that there is one.

However if your point was there was no need for them since Trademark already covered the design aspect that someone would patent, then I would tend to agree.

Patents remain in force for a fixed term then automatically expire. They do not need to be used.Trademarks remain in force until they are no longer either used or enforced. The term is effectively unlimited, but the expiration can be almost immediate if not used.

Another difference between patents and copyrights versus trademarks is that patents and copyrights do not need to be protected to remain valid for their terms. Trademarks must be actively enforced by the owner or it can be lost. Many US terms (aspirin for example) were originally trademarks but because they became synonymous to any similar (or identical) product. Aspirin was in the US originally a trademark of Bayer and now refers to any product whose active ingredient is acetyl salicylic acid - what aspirin refers to.

Any C compiler implementing strictly portable arithmetic since the late 70s or early 80s has been doing that, and many compilers implemented strict portability at least as an option. The subject of doing this or not doing this and why was the kind of thing that long geeky threads on BBSs of the era.

Another difference between patents and copyrights versus trademarks is that patents and copyrights do not need to be protected to remain valid for their terms. Trademarks must be actively enforced by the owner or it can be lost. Many US terms (aspirin for example) were originally trademarks but because they became synonymous to any similar (or identical) product. Aspirin was in the US originally a trademark of Bayer and now refers to any product whose active ingredient is acetyl salicylic acid - what aspirin refers to.

This is generally a big problem for the pharma industry, as people tend to refer to whatever the brand name medication was rather than the true chemical name unless the chemical name is short and punchy. Acetaminophen is pretty much the only one that has really managed to become a standard piece of vocabulary, though others have evaded it via more general terms (decongestant, cough syrup, cold medicine, ect. are all used, though none identify particular chemicals).

Acetaminophen is pretty much the only one that has really managed to become a standard piece of vocabulary

If we just stay right on the topic of NSAIDs, next in line would be Advil, which has also maintained its trademark, and I do believe "ibuprofen" is vastly, vastly better know term than acetaminophen, so I can't imagine what criteria you're using to say Tylenol is the ONLY example, unless you're selectively counting only those proper names you've deemed to be unpleasantly long and complicated.

The next that comes to mind is iodine vs Betadine, as I expect the former generic name is probably more commonly used, even if not as technically specific. And also amoxicillin, as the generic term seems to be more popular than the slightly shorter brand names. I bet I could think of a lot more if I put a little time into it.

Their most important patent #5490216, mentioned in the article, was the basis for product activation software that they developed and actively sold (through IBM) in the 1990s. As far as I know it was a genuinely new product; there wasn't anything else like it available at the time. I'm not a fan of software patents, but if there is ever a software patent worth defending then it's one like this: an apparently innovative commercial product that was sold worldwide.

It might have been new at the time, but I reject the notion that it was innovative or novel in any way. There were certainly anti-piracy methods in use before they came along. And the idea of product registration is a trivial extension of math and cryptography. While certain crypto algorithms are patented, you can't patent the very idea of crypto, which is essentially the same as patenting the fundamental idea of product registration. They basically filed a patent on the concept of password-protecting software.

Doubtful. Good scientists, engineers and researchers have very well tuned bullshit sniffers. If you're a patent clerk who considers everything novel by default, handing out patents like penny candies, you probably wouldn't recognize an important discovery if it you hit you over the head with a sledgehammer. I'm tired of this "patent clerks don't have enough time to do proper reviews" excuse that gets trotted out every time a laughably bogus patent is identified. That's where the bullshit sniffer is supposed to come in.

The bigger problem and reason you see so many is because, unless this has changed recently, at the USPTO the patent clerks are paid based on the number of patents they grant. Ergo, there's a perverse incentive for them to let as much pass as possible.

How did something like that get a patent in the first place?! What are the patent examiners smoking? What's it going to take to get meaningful patent reform in this country? Dear God! The stupid, it burns!

Current patent law is designed to protect large established companies (who can afford to have lawyers on staff) from start-ups and entrepreneurs who are more agile and innovative but can't afford to fight patent lawsuits. It's a case of money protecting money. The net effect is the exact opposite of what patent systems were created for.

Acetaminophen is pretty much the only one that has really managed to become a standard piece of vocabulary

If we just stay right on the topic of NSAIDs, next in line would be Advil, which has also maintained its trademark, and I do believe "ibuprofen" is vastly, vastly better know term than acetaminophen, so I can't imagine what criteria you're using to say Tylenol is the ONLY example, unless you're selectively counting only those proper names you've deemed to be unpleasantly long and complicated.

The next that comes to mind is iodine vs Betadine, as I expect the former generic name is probably more commonly used, even if not as technically specific. And also amoxicillin, as the generic term seems to be more popular than the slightly shorter brand names. I bet I could think of a lot more if I put a little time into it.

Technically acetaminophen is not an NSAID. It is an analgesic anti-pyretic (fever reducer) but lacks anti-inflammatory effects. As an aside there was a trademark granted for ANSAID (flurbiprofen). Which I believe was Wyeths's acronym for Another NSAID. Many drugs are commonly referred to by their generic name, though I spend a great deal of time translating one way or the other for Dr's, nurses, patients and caregivers. (What is metoprolol? Well, Mrs Johnson, it could be equivalent to TOPROL or LOPRESSOR depending on what preparation you have. If it's the tartrate that's lopressor if its succinate or says XL its TOPROL, that's the long acting version). Lisinipril, folic acid, methotrexate, and a host of other examples exist where most of the time I only hear the generic name. On the other hand many pharmaceutical's with complicated generic names will have multiple "generic" trade names. Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprin goes by SEPTRA, COTRIM, or BACTRIM. Guiafenesin-codeine, I've seen Robitussin AC, Siltussin AC, Cheratussin AC, Guiatuss AC, Tussin AC.

I actually totally forgot about ibuprofen, which is also extremely well known. There are others as well that I forgot. People do know the names for some opiates as well (codeine, morphine, ect) but those aren't over the counter medicines. There's some others as well, such as nitrous oxide (laughing gas), serotonin, and dopamine, and people know what SSRIs are as well (though that isn't a chemical name per se, it isn't a brand name either).

I don't really count folic acid as a medication any more than I count other vitamins.

Sure, people who are very knowledgeable about medicine will refer to these things by those names, but I would bet that the average American won't even be able to tell you what everything I listed in the top paragraph is.

Lisinipril, folic acid, methotrexate, and a host of other examples exist where most of the time I only hear the generic name. On the other hand many pharmaceutical's with complicated generic names will have multiple "generic" trade names. Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprin goes by SEPTRA, COTRIM, or BACTRIM. Guiafenesin-codeine, I've seen Robitussin AC, Siltussin AC, Cheratussin AC, Guiatuss AC, Tussin AC.

Yeah, that's not exhausting at all. It almost seems designed to be pointlessly, dangerously confusing.